Description

Boston Corbett, the man who killed John Wilkes Booth, Cabinet
Photograph and Autograph Letter Signed. The original image, a
head and shoulders pose, was taken in May 1865 and shows Corbett in
his uniform jacket (its sergeant stripes barely visible on the
arms), but without cap or other military accoutrements. This
cabinet-sized print, larger and clearer than the original
cartes-de-visite, is on a mount marked at foot "M.B. Brady,
Washington, D.C." In the letter, one page, 5" x 8", Corbett writes
from Camden, N.J., 13 July 1878, to a "Dear Lady", stating
in part, "I thought it hardly right for me to be honored in
writing an autograph, in my present condition in life. But as I
have just answered a similar request, I could not reasonably deny
yours." Corbett's reluctance seems disingenuous, since he had
never been publicity shy and even tried to capitalize on his fame
by lecturing, until word spread that his "lectures" devolved into
religious rants. Corbett belonged to the 16th New York Cavalry, the
unit that finally cornered Lincoln's assassin on a Virginia farm.
Since no orders preventing it had been given, Corbett was never
disciplined for shooting Booth, and he shared equally with his
fellow troopers in the federal reward money. Declared insane after
brandishing a gun in the Kansas state legislative chamber where he
was a doorkeeper, Corbett was declared insane. He soon escaped from
his asylum -- and from history as well, since he was never heard of
again. A small October 1887 newspaper clipping glued at the foot of
this photo, on recto, reports on his insanity. The photograph is
fine. The letter is irregularly toned from having been overlaid
with other papers; fine.

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